A CONFEDERATE GIRL'S DIARY.*
THE American Civil War yielded less written evidence by noncombatants as to the experiences and conditions of those terrible years than might have been expected. At all events this is true of the South ; the men were nearly all lighting, and the women who were not swept by the tide of war when once the Federate began to crush their opponents were busy managing their homes and the slaves. The history of the decision to publish this diary, written by Mrs. Dawson when she was Sarah Morgan, is very interesting. A Philadelphian, in talking to Mrs. Dawson long after the war, alluded to a certain " brilliant victory" by the Federal vessel • Essex' over the Confederate vessel ' Arkansas' on the ilississippi. Mrs. Dawson at once protested, and said that the Confederates had fired and abandoned their ship when the engines had broken down. The Federals had done nothing more than capture a smoking hulk. She knew, as she had seen the affair with her own eyes. The Philadelphian gravely cor- rected her, for the Northern historians bad long since agreed upon an account of the episode gratifying to Federal pride. "But," insisted Mrs. Dawson, " I wrote a description of the whole, just a few hours after it occurred." She then explained how day by day she bad kept her diary, and had never failed in her task even amid the breathlessness of a stampede or while %hells were bursting over the house where she eat. " If that record still existed, it would be invaluable," said the Phila- delphian. Mrs. Dawson promised to send him the diary. On returning to her home at Charleston she opened the parcel containing the volumes of her diary ; on the outside were the words "To be burned after my death." She bad supposed that a diary written only to distract her torturing thoughts could have no interest for anyone but herself, and even she had never reopened the books since their completion. She found that the ink had faded so as to be almost illegible in places, but she made a careful transcription of all the essential parts and sent it to her Philadelphian acquaintance. Later elm received the copy back with cold regrets that she had not resisted the temptation to rearrange the matter. No young Southern girl, it was suggested, could possibly have had at that time the thoughts and the foresight attributed to her in the diary. Mrs. Dawson, wounded and discouraged, restored the books to their linen cover and never looked at them again. Yet her son, Mr. Warrington Dawson, whose curiosity had been aroused, eventually persuaded her to revoke her decision as to burning them. He has now trans- cribed and published them, and in an introduction lee explains that several persons besides himself have seen them. Moreover, he gives a photograph of one of the Page,.
We must say here that, though the Philadelphian men- tioned above may have behaved in an insulting manner, his Scepticism was highly intelligible. Mr. Warrington Dawson himself remarks that the style is almost incredible in a Young girl, and one who had had little regular education. Again, the wonderfully balanced judgments of these diaries incline him to find excuses for the Philadelphian's very curt judgment. For our own part, we are never staggered into unbelief by a command of style wherever it may appear. Shakespeare, Bunyan, and Lincoln (who was framing his immortal speeches at the same time that these diaries were being written) should surely cure any man for ever of trying to measure the gift of style by the educational opportunities of an author. Nor do we find the judgments of Sarah Morgan so precociously balunced or mature as to make us sceptical on their account. What would afflict us much more, if we wanted to find grounds for scepticism, is an almost indefinable something in the diaries that does not seem to us to ring true. Therein much artifice in the
• A C.ostfoclenste Girl s Diary By Sarah Morgan D twaaa. With an Introdue tot toy' Warrington Dawma, and with !Vasty-attain.' Loudon : William Heinesimaa. toe. net.] • • • -
writing; and when we remember the intense affection of Sarah Morgan for her brothers, we confess that we wish the news of the death of two of them had been recorded in terms that would strike us at once as the unstudied expression of is young girl's overwhelming grief. We do not say this to cast any doubts on the diaries ; we accept Mr. Dawson's guarantee that they are exactly what he states them to be. We only wish to point out that the scepticism to which Mr. Dawson himself draws attention seems to us to have been entertained for wrong reasons. For a young girl to have written in the studied manner of Sarah Morgan under the peculiar condition% is certainly a literary curiosity worth noting.
Sarah Morgan was one of the daughters of Judge Morgan of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The Judge died at the beginning of the war. He bad declared his opinion against Secession, but had withdrawn his objections when war was known to be the will of the South. One of his sons at New Orleans remained a Unionist throughout the war, and one of hie daughters was married to a Federal officer. His two other sons fought for the South. It will thus be seen that the Morgan family within its own small limits felt all the drastic meaning of civil war. When the diary opens Sarah Morgan was living with her mother and her unmarried sister in the house left by the Judge to his widow. We see burning bales of cotton drifting down the Mississippi, for the •• Seceshers " were determined to destroy their valuable pro- perty now that Baton Rouge was threatened with occupation by the Federals. No one believed that fighting would last long. For one thing, it was supposed that Great Britain; touched at one of her tenderest points of commerce, was bound to intervene. Those burning bales of cotton, for one thing, signalized the breaking up for ever of the old river life of the Mississippi as we know it in the pages of Mark: Twain. We have often read of the devastating hate of the Southern women for the Federate, and Sarah Morgan's account does not diminish our conception of it. W. R. Russell in lily Diary North and South said that he could not have believed bad he not heard them that such words of savagely could fall from innocent lips. When the Federals occupied Baton Rouge Sarah Morgan suffered the humiliation of feeling that her publicly expressed contempt for the Federal officers was not justified. All this process of mental and moral readjust- ment is described with a delightfully unconscious display of primness which we in this country might call characteristically " Mid-Victorian." Perhaps she had believed the legendary stuff about the Southerners being all gentlemen—descendants of the Cavaliers—and the Northerners all men of the bagman type. Anyhow, her revulsion of feeling brought her into suspicion with the people of Baton Rouge. Had not her father before her held unorthodox opinions P And now here was this girl hobnobbing with the assassins who hoped for nothing better than the slaughter of two of her brothers ! In reading the diaries one can see how this girl of extraordinary spirit and determination was bound to be the object of gossip and disparagement, and yet a more loyal defender of the cause she believed to be right never breathed. We are interested by the particular piece of information that a Southern girl spat in the face of the great Farragut when Baton Rouge was occupied by the Federals. After many false alarms and temporary with- drawals, the Morgans were compelled finally to leave their home when the Southerners assaulted the town. The house was looted, and all the possessions that were not stolen were wantonly destroyed. It is the common fate of modem Lion to please neither side. Ultimately the family, in poor health, and after suffering something approaching starvation at Clinton, were compelled to cross into Federal territory and take the "Eagle Oath." It is a pathetic picture of the widow forced to repeat the hated words of allegiance, and not the less pathetic because we think that the Southern cause was wholly wrong, or because the Federal officers who administered the oath had nothing 'with which to reproach themselves in their manner of doing it.
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